After a summer full of community consultations, we have devised the following five asks for mayoral and council candidates:
We ask candidates to commit to:
- Make housing more affordable, diverse, and accessible by:
- Adopting a new Affordable Housing Strategy by 2028 that establishes measurable targets for below market rentals and low-end market rentals, including targets for family-sized and accessible units, and publicly reports progress each year.
- Prioritizing affordable housing on City-owned land. Move the four City-owned sites currently being considered for affordable housing toward development during the next Council term, retaining public ownership wherever feasible.
- Designing housing for people at every age and ability. Ensure that affordable units have comparable accessibility, liveability and family suitability to market units.
- Improve food security and strengthen Richmond’s local food system by:
- Adopting and fully funding the Community Food Action Plan 2027–2032, with measurable targets for reducing barriers to nutritious and culturally appropriate food and annual public reporting on implementation.
- Implementing Richmond’s new Food Distribution Hub. Council approved the distribution hub model in June 2026. Ensure its implementation supports Richmond farmers, small food businesses and processors while also creating strong partnerships with food banks, community food programs and organizations serving residents experiencing food insecurity.
- Providing reliable funding for community food-security organizations. Maintain and expand the City’s Environmental Enhancement and Food Security Grant program and support organizations providing food access, food skills and community food programming.
- Protect Richmond from flooding, extreme heat and other climate disasters by:
- Setting a transparent long-term schedule for upgrading Richmond’s perimeter dikes to 2100 flood-protection standards, publicly reporting each year on kilometres upgraded, remaining infrastructure, costs and projected completion timelines.
- Making every neighbourhood safer during extreme heat, wildfire smoke and major emergencies. Establish an accessible network of cooling and clean-air spaces, strengthen backup power and emergency readiness at community facilities, and provide multilingual and accessible emergency information with particular attention to seniors, people with disabilities, lower-income residents and people living alone.
- Accelerating the implementation of CEEP 2050 through energy-efficient and low-carbon buildings, district energy, active transportation, transit-supportive land use, electric-vehicle infrastructure and protection and expansion of the urban tree canopy. Publish annual community emissions and climate-adaptation progress against the City’s 2030 and 2050 targets and identify corrective action when Richmond is not on track.
- Make community spaces easier to access and create opportunities for people to build connections in their communities by:
- Creating a simple, centralized City facility-booking system. Residents and community organizations should be able to see available rooms and spaces, rental rates, insurance and permit requirements, accessibility information and the status of their request through one online portal, with clear service standards for City responses.
- Making better use of existing public buildings. Work with Richmond School District, community associations and other public or non-profit partners to expand evening and weekend access to underused meeting rooms, gyms, halls and gathering spaces.
- Creating a year-round calendar of events across Richmond. Fully implement the Signature and Community Events Plan 2025–2029 and Arts Strategy 2026–2031 while expanding smaller neighbourhood-based events during fall and winter, not only large summer festivals and events concentrated in a small number of locations.
- Improve access to affordable, inclusive child and senior care by:
- Meeting or exceeding Richmond’s target of 3,741 additional child-care spaces by 2031, with annual public reporting showing spaces created by neighbourhood, age group, type of care and accessibility.
- Working with Richmond School District to deliver before- and after-school child care at or within walking distance of every elementary school by 2031, as envisioned in the City’s existing Child Care Action Plan.
- Increasing spaces for senior daycare. Work with developers and providers to add senior daycare space in new developments throughout the city.
How you can get involved:
- Strike up conversations in your community about which of these asks matter to you and why.
- Attend our mayoral and council all-candidates’ debates by RSVPing here: https://forms.gle/vC1XSgFfoG4bAzM7A
- Vote! For dates and more information, visit the City of Richmond’s website: https://www.richmond.ca/city-hall/elections.htm